A special Friday posting to get the blood flowing. Here, after a very heartfelt and reasoned coffee discussion, we delve into round two of our Game of Tournaments and take a side trip on the Tokaido road.

With new rules in place in this ever morphing contest we hope to get you, dear listener, involved in the action. We will posting the second round match-ups over the next few days. Please head over to our BGG blog and partake in the adventure that is the Game of Tournaments.

It’s here. Time to find out which game will win the Unplaced Worker in Punching Cardboard’s 2014 Game of Tournaments. While there has been interest, we did not have enough offers to judge the games from real live humans, so we will assign each game to a playoff bound NHL team and let them decide the fate of board gaming as we know it.

After a lot of complex algorithms and random number rolls we have a final listing of games and the NHL teams that will represent them. Here are the pairings:

In our first episode we discuss the merits of the Peter Hawes designed Francis Drake. We take a look at the stellar components and discuss the trend toward higher quality swag in current board games. Has anyone else noticed that the price of admission has also increased?

We stumble around a bit as well, being that it’s our first cast and all.